


Open

by MurielJones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotionally Hurt Dean, Emotionally Hurt Sam, Hurt Sam, Hurt Sam Winchester, M/M, Time Travel, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 16:23:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12708582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MurielJones/pseuds/MurielJones
Summary: Yet another one of those little fics as a result of I like Mary, I like hurting Sam, and then there’s Dean and Cas, or is that Cas and Dean.  So here is the summary, Sam can open a gateway into another world to get Mary back.  However, there is the massive problem of he and Cas have both lied, extensively, to Dean.  Sam is tortured by Dean along the way (in the past) it’s sort of graphic.  And this ends badly, just plain badly;  of you were hoping for a happy ending this is not your story.  It is set variously between s3/4 and s7/8 and between s12/13 and is cannon divergent.  Time is not linear, at least not in this story and probably not anywhere else.  Trigger warning:  restraint, torture





	Open

They are sitting there in a heap.  Sam thinks there should be a fancier word for this, but it’s just not coming to him.  They are too tired, too shaken, too bereft for fancy words anyhow.  In a single night the world has changed and so has theirs.

Their mother is gone.  Dean can’t help but feel like a lost five year old, alone and overwhelmed once by the burden of his brother, and now overwhelmed by the burden of the world.  He tries not to cry, his bottom lip bitten virtually raw.  He tries not to resent Sam; he tries not to think of Mary as _his_ mother: Sam barley knew her, Sam can’t remember her from childhood, Sam didn’t have to watch his mother die in a fire, Sam didn’t have to watch his mother become something she never wanted to be because of _his_ choices – Dean did.  It wasn’t Sam’s fault it was Dean’s fault that his mother was in the hands of Lucifer rather than in some safe fanciful heaven.  Dean knew all of that.

Cas is tucked up against Dean’s side.  He should be a relief to Dean, Dean had just watched the man, angel, the only person who he actually loved more than his family, die.  First Cas nearly died at the hands of Ramiel then he betrayed them all—left on a jaunt with his angel ‘family’, Dean, he betrayed Dean, and then he died. In that moment Dean had known he would save Cas over his mother—she hadn’t lived some full and blessed life raising a family and take care of others—she had spent most of her life dead and the rest as a hunter;  but Dean would have saved Cas over  his mother and Dean didn’t want to know that about himself.  But Cas is tucked up against his side, bedraggled, still part way gone, struggling back into himself, quiet, thrumming with more power than Dean is used to, energy that seems to be loosing it’s way as it enters into Cas’ vessel; pushing into Cas even though he is as yet unable to control his voice and his limbs let alone a charge that could change the world.  Dean slides an arm around Cas’ shoulders, lets Cas’ head rest, twists their fingers together.  He can’t bear having his heart ripped out again and again. But without Cas does he even have a heart?  He doesn’t want to know that either.

Sam sits on the other ratty motel bed, mustard colored spread not improving things, he sits with the teen sleeping, it’s head cradled in his lap; collapsed from exerting uncontrolled power the boy nephilim is seeking comfort by sucking on Sam’s thumb like an infant.  Sam has an undeniably annoyed expression, and Dean can’t help but smile.  Sam smiles back, but it’s sad and as it transforms into tears Sam looks up and away, trying to control himself, trying to control this whole fucking mess that is completely out of their control, but he had had it together enough to rip Cas’ dead body out of Dean’s arms and present the corpse of the angel to the bewildered child, and almost demand that he bring Cas back;  and he had enough presence of mind to drag them all away from the closed portal, the clear signal of power that would bring every supernatural wanna-be racing to that deserted place, he had it together enough to get them all the hell out of there, out of the cabin, out of the forest, out of anywhere anyone might know they were.  Right now he is it, he has to keep his wrecked little family afloat and he won’t cry.

Sam, Dean thinks, had had it together enough that he hadn’t taken them home.  Then again, what home, their safety is gone, no matter who else is and isn’t coming back, they aren’t, and Dean thinks about what Sam had said, about how it always ended badly when Sam tried to have a real home. 

Dean wants to yell at Sam to cry, that Sam isn’t going to make a damn thing better by acting like he isn’t falling apart.  But then again, Dean thinks, Mary may really have meant more to him than to Sam, and Sam bears little of the guilt in this. Dean wonders if Sam lost a home, or lost a pretense of home created to make Dean feel better.  But Sam is silent and stroking the head of the little demon spawn that brought this on them, and forcing back tears that Dean can’t hold anymore.  Dean rests into Cas and pretends not to cry, and hopes Sam isn’t looking because he really is _pretending_ not to cry.

“We need to open the portal.”  That was obvious.  It was so obvious that it didn’t need to be said; plainly Cas needed to say it.

Dean looks at Sam, this opens old wounds, wounds the he himself had declared closed, but scarring is brittle, and Dean feels the first tear.  Sam’s face jerks, his mouth twists a little, he sets his free hand on his leg, and swallows.  Dean just knows that Sam is going to say something horrible.

“I know how.”

Dean can’t help it.  He wasn’t expecting this.  He wasn’t expecting this level of betrayal.

“All along?”  It’s quiet, but it’s only quiet because Dean has to channel his rage, or he will risk setting off unknown consequences with Jack-the-Nephilim—and beating Sam to death right now would just be a poor plan, probably.

Cas, struggling upright, lays a quieting hand on Dean’s shoulder.  “Yes.”  Says Cas.  “He has.”  And as if it need to be made worse, Cas adds:  “For a while now.”

Sam doesn’t want to say “I can explain.” He has no right to say that to his brother ever in his life again, so he doesn’t.

“Sam can explain.”  They both love Cas, they do, but Sam is wishing Cas would keep quiet.

Dean continues, looking at Sam: “’that so Sammy?”

“He looked for you.”  Cas adds, it doesn’t follow—and Dean could really stand something that made sense—but in it there is some consolation.

Sam can’t decide if Cas is being helpful or unhelpful, but he’s definitely being Cas and that’s important.

Dean doesn’t know what to think, because that was a lie, one hell of a whopper of a lie that Sam even asked for forgiveness for doing the thing he lied about doing, not doing.  “Sam?”   Dean’s chest is tied tight waiting for answer, waiting for a really great explanation as to why the brother who could have fetched him from purgatory didn’t…when he had looked, he knew how for fuck’s sakes, he didn’t come through, Sam had the answer and in the end he didn’t come through.  Dean closes his eyes, looks down, tries to shrug off Cas’ comforting hand. 

Cas just stays where he is, tired, weary down to whatever his angel-soul is, unsure of who he is, wanting comfort himself and finding nothing.

“I couldn’t use it, I can in theory, but….”  Sam takes a deep breath, he’s thinking of forgiving Crowley for something that has caused such a rift between him and his brother, and he doesn’t really want Dean to have details.  He wants to pretend Dean will have forgotten the details…but you don’t forget hell.

Dean waits, and Sam knows Dean is waiting for him.

“Sam?”

Sam doesn’t want to tell Dean about this deal with Crowley, about how he traded Crowley three things, first to leave Kevin with Crowley, second the forgo hunting, and third to spend three days, only three it seemed then – although he knew better – in hell.  These things done Sam would receive a key to open a portal – one portal, one time, fetch on person – with instructions as to how to use it.  These three things Sam had done.

Those days in hell – always unmentionable – they will always sit with Sam, leaning heavily in his mind, reminding him why he needed to save Dean from being a demon and why it was his fault that Dean was a demon in the first place.  One moment Sam had been walking the streets of LA with Crowley constructing a deal, the next Crowley’s tongue was too far down Sam’s throat, his lips tender though, and his pace slow, and then next Sam was standing watching Dean torture a hapless soul on the rack.  And god, how young Dean looked, to Sam, and fresh, and strong.  Sam stared at him, not hiding his presence, thinking his own suffering was to be watching Dean’s cruel hands, not knowing that this wasn’t a vision from a past time—not know that he had been passed back in time, living Dean’s hell.

Then Dean broke his focus, looked up and saw Sam.  “Sammy?”  Sam can still hear that in the dead of night, “Sammy?”  The betrayal as deep, deeper, than when Sam didn’t save him from purgatory.  “Sammy?”  That voice still resonates every time he hurts Dean. Sam, at the time, didn’t say anything, still unsure if this was a hallucination, some sort of a window on time, or if he was standing with Dean in real _real_ hell.  For a moment he wondered if this is now, real now, his now, current his now, because Dean couldn’t be in hell, couldn’t be, Sam had done his research, Dean and Cas were in purgatory.  But when he sees Uriel and Alistair both watching on then he know this is the hell the Dean lived and he was part of it, he made part of it.    “I did this?  This!  For you…and here you are Sam…dead, not even old yet!  You didn’t get out! A wife?  A home Sammy?  You died hunting didn’t you?  And in the pit Sam?  What in the hell did you do Sammy?”  The voice sounds just like Dean, angry, but Dean—Sam had somehow thought he would sound different in hell, but the demon his brother was working on becoming sounded and looked just like Dean should.   (Sam had no idea at the time, though he knows now, that he would be able to use that knowledge later.  He had no idea that seeing Dean as a demon then would be one of the gifts of his ordeal.)  “Or did you make some deal of your own?”  Sam had looked to Crowley for guidance as to his role here—and there was no Crowley.

Dean left his rack, he stepped forward and grabbed Sam, slammed him up against the wall, his hands bloodied and blackened from the blade used cold and hot, he looked into Sam’s eyes and told Sam the truth: ‘It’s your fault.’  And Sam had shaken free, had walked over to the rack since vacated by some fleeing soul and laid down, a knife to his bone would better than what he had done to Dean, what he was about to do;  Sam knew his role here, it was his fault – just that he hadn’t know it, until now – that the righteous man spilled blood in hell.  Sam was the first seal as Lillith was the last.

Dean, the innocent man in all this, examines  his blade for a moment and then casts what appears to be an objective eye over Sam—Sam offering himself as temptation.  Sam knew he was crying, his body shaking in big jerks as Dean quietly fastened the unnecessary shackles, Sam wasn’t going anywhere, he had a deal, this was his only hope.  Dean just stands there, and Sam sees the last of the sparkle of green in Dean’s eyes, the last of his brother trying to say ‘I can’t’.  It isn’t a leap for Sam – hell pain and real pain mixing – that for Dean to have spilled blood in hell it would have to be living human blood, not the blood of a guilty soul, the blood of a guilty man, brother, Cain and Abel all over again.  Sam has to start the apocalypse again.  The only way to get Cas to rescue Dean from hell is for Sam to tempt Dean to spill his blood, is for Sam to be the first seal.  “You stupid fucking son of a bitch…”  Sam’s not sure what else he was going to say to Dean because that does it.

“Don’t you talk about Mom like that!  Don’t you…”  Dean had hissed in his ear, and then a long cut, deep in below Sam’s sternum, down into his abdomen, stopping just above his pubis;  then Dean’s hand reaches into Sam and Dean has ripped out Sam’s beating heart.  He leaves that setting, beating, on Sam’s chest where he can see it; Sam half expects him to eat it.

Pain, pain, pain, not hell pain, now pain, real pain, it doesn’t matter he can’t scream because Dean cut his tongue out long ago, and then healed, slammed back together by an angel, watching his brother be admired, his brother’s work be admired by Azazel, because Dean never gouges his eyes out – just his heart and his tongue  – Dean wants him to watch;  Sam watches his brother carve and skewer and burn his body, helpless to ask for mercy, knowing that he doesn’t need it— his brother wouldn’t be here, this whole thing wouldn’t have started if it weren’t for his innate darkness, _his_ demon blood.  Dean reminds Sam over over over and that it’s Sam’s fault, Sam’s fault, that this whole thing began, that their mother is dead, and that Dean is in hell;  Sam wants to curse him out, to tell him something, not to stop, but to wait and listen, to go with the angel that will come for him, but Sam’s tongue only skitters and slithers as it sits next to his beating heart. 

Dean carves into Sam, butchering him, breaking his bones like little brittle bird bones under demon fingers, pulling layers from Sam’s heart—Sam wouldn’t stop him if he could, because Sam knows what Dean doesn’t yet, that Sam will betray him, choose a demon over him, drink demon blood, free Lucifer, come back from hell and even without his soul he should have told Dean, Sam knows he has broken Dean’s heart and he let’s Dean break his; what he should say to Dean is ‘I deserve this, do it.’ As Dean breaks Sam’s heart he digs into Sam’s chest for his soul, he pulls Sam apart layer by layer, not entirely necessary perhaps, but Dean wants to know what made Sam a monster in the first place, Dean peals layers from Sam, of betrayal, of jealously, of anger, anger, anger, of lust, of avarice, he digs to the deepest part of Sam and still surrounded by dirt is Sam’s soul – Dean closes his fist around it to crush it, it’s hidden so deep in Sam’s chest that he never sees the bright light that is family and home and Dean and love.

Sam’s beating heart is silent and Sam’s writhing tongue is stilled.

Sam forgot then that there was a different now, he forgot there was a different time, forgot there was a different place and offered his neck, threw back his head turned his jaw to the side, offered himself to Dean for Dean to brand him with an iron made only for his brother.  (It was a mark Dean wouldn’t see again for a long time, and that Sam would see all too soon, but of course neither of them knew that then.) 

Then there was Cas, the flutter of wings, Castiel – as yet unadulterated  – Angel of Lord; Sam knew better than to stare, he knew to shut his eyes, but he didn’t, he took a good look at the angel to be sure it was the right one:  he needed this is be Dean’s salvation.  When he knew it was Cas he knew Dean was saved and that the apocalypse had begun.  Letting Dean break him had worked, it was Dean’s get-out out of hell not-so-free card. 

Sam heard his flesh burn, he saw Cas grab Dean by the shoulder, he saw Dean’s eyes turn to their bright green as Dean released Sam’s soul back into his chest;  then he was back Crowley’s side – heart in his chest, tongue dry in his mouth, brand still scalding. 

Sitting here in the raggedy motel room, with Cas and Dean and Jack-the-nephilim it almost seems impossible, but Sam can still feel the bitter mark behind his ear that he can’t erase from himself, the one that says he failed his brother. 

Cas had looked at Sam that day in hell, he had looked into Sam’s eyes and all he saw was a hurt monster – he hadn’t looked further to what Dean held in his hand, he didn’t know what Dean held until much later when he left it in Lucifer’s cage – Cas had seen the boy-king shackled and calmed and controlled and if he, Castiel Angel of the Lord, had had the choice of his own thoughts he might have left it all as it was;  Dean as his own demon and Sam on the rack of hell, and he would have stayed and watched over them, a hand resting on Dean’s shoulder.  (Years later when he saw Dean as a demon again Cas might again consider the idea that it suited Dean, but that would be another story.) But the thing he saw also in the boy-king’s eyes was relief and gratitude as Cas grasped his brother by the shoulder to raise him from hell.  When Cas saw the boy again he was younger, so afraid, damaged rather than evil, but he stank of abomination none the less; he stank of hell, but there was no mark on him.  Later, as Cas was drawing the last of Gadreel’s grace from Sam Cas had seen the mark;  his Sam, this Sam was the one on the rack tortured by Dean, but he kept all that to himself.  Dean didn’t know and Sam clearly didn’t want his brother to find out.

Right now however they are sitting here.  “I got the key Dean, I just couldn’t use it.”

Dean closes his eyes.  “Sam…”  it trails off into a hush;  Dean trying to tell Sam to shut up and not try.  “Spare me…”

Sam had looked around at the street, looked at Crowley, shaken his head, his mouth tight, his forehead creased:  “Dean?”  It’s the only word he can say.

“Dean?  Dean’s not here.” Crowley cheerfully paraphrased. Sam was not in the mood for Crowley’s sense of humor, but the universe apparently didn’t care how Sam Winchester felt.  Now Sam wonders if Crowley had been to this place before, if he knew how this all ended, if he knew that Sam would need it later, if it was some sort of weird gift.  Later this evening he will question if he intended that word ‘gift’.

Crowley smiles, “I promised you the key Sam, not Dean.”

Sam’s heart pounds:  _now what, now what, now what_.  It’s a strong steady beat.

“All you have to do is to get your heart broken by the one you love the most.”

So Sam set out, he drove aimlessly, he hit a dog – by accident, Sam Winchester is a kind man – he met a vet called Amelia, and he fell in love, at least he did his level best to fall in love, and to get his heart broken.  He left Kevin be, and it made him sad and guilty but he was already those things and it didn’t break his heart, he left off hunting, and it was good in it’s own way, although it made him feel as though he were betraying Dean, and he did his damndest to fall in love.  If he had been any good at all at falling in love he would have had his heart broken, but it just didn’t work, Amelia’s husband came back, Amelia left him, sort of—still no portal, no Dean.

Until Dean came back.  Sam couldn’t bear to tell him how he had failed, and Sam never wanted Dean to know that it was this Sam, this real Sam, his Sam that Dean had tortured  in hell, he wanted Dean to believe it was all an illusion, those happened in hell, Sam knew that, he hoped he knew that.  It was better that Dean never understand, that Sam never explain.  Sam never wanted to let on that he eventually knew, all those years later, knew why Dean had held him so tight, that he knew, all those years later, as Dean held him for the first time Dean was checking for the brand that wasn’t yet there.  Sam knew why Dean wished that he couldn’t feel a thing.  Sam kept his hair long.

“I loved them more than you.”  That’s Dean talking, and Sam is jerked back into the here and now.

They are sitting in a dingy hotel room, trying to get their Mom back, and Dean suddenly thinks it’s relevant that he loved Cas and their Mom more than Sam did.  Then Dean is silent, Sam had expected something more, he guessed, but it was reasonable he though, certainly Cas, no one could argue that Dean would love Cas more than Sam loved him; their Mom, that hurt, but maybe it was the case, how would Sam know?  Then Sam listens to the sentence in his again because he feels as though somehow he didn’t quite follow.  He opens his mouth to ask but Dean is angry, of course Dean is angry, after all what he just heard from Sam was just another excuse for why Sam failed, and failed, and failed him.  Sam couldn’t reach Dean and he can’t save their mom because he can’t use the fucking key?

So Dean clarifies something for Sam, he wouldn’t have said it if not in anger, and so much pain, if he was feeling any stronger he would probably have hit Sam instead (it would have been preferable):  “I loved them more than I love you Sam.”

Sam’s chest is empty, his heart ripped away, but he still feels the beat, beat, beat, he tries to speak, but there is nothing just silence where his words should be; both these things are familiar to him. The mark burns, burns as hot as when it was fresh, as Sam tries to slam a hand over it Cas grabs his hand, stops him from waking the key, and Dean sees it, his brand on Sam’s neck.

Time shudders and shifts under Dean, his mind supplies ‘that was Sam, that was Sam, that was really Sam, that was this Sam, that was your Sam,’ but Dean had checked, he knows he had checked Sam for the mark, Dean was so horrified when he saw it again on his own arm, knew the meaning of it, and now he knows that some fucking how it was his Sam, Sam went to hell for him.  Did Sam go to hell to free him?  Why the hell would Sam do that?  Sam said he didn’t do anything, but Sam lies.  And Sam was the first seal wasn’t he?  How long has Sam known all this?  And Cas?  Has Cas known since the beginning?  Dean remembers looking at Sam eventually broken, crushing Sam’s soul when Cas lifted him from hell.   Dean wants it all to end, he wants to feel nothing.

Cas sees in Sam the man from the rack, willingly broken by Dean.

Cas lets Sam’s hand go and it slams over the burn on his neck, Cas whispers Mary’s name, the boy nephilim stirs.  Mary Winchester slams to the floor in front of them as a blaze of light that was the passage between worlds disappears;  she looks around, she rolls to her feet only a flimsy night gown covering her, ready to fight anyhow.  “Where are my boys?”  She demands.  She looks around for weapons, dashes for their munitions bag faster than they can, and comes up with Dean’s pearl handle gun, which she expertly cocks and points, varying her aim between them.  “Take me the fuck back to my children.”  She hisses.

Dean just wants to give in, Cas holds him.

 


End file.
